no writer could ask for a better set of friends and many and ray and neck and everyone who is here and curates new books coming out so carefully.

and that is the case so eloquently for them. and the continuity, and the class of 1999. and the journey to publication. and this is a monument to the amazing history of the little red schoolhouses, and also her amazing persistence which i will tell you something about. dina sometimes feel shy about the folk -- the fact that it is dated 1999. i don't think that is anything at all that needs explanation. deserves phrase. one thing i will say to my

students is there is no word for the fastest book. i mean it. there's only a word for the best book. she took 20 years to write a bright, shining lie and took 18 years to write carry me home. when all is done and the book is out the only thing that matters is quality and the grit of the author and seeing it through all the lonely work that it takes to get to a night like this and dina hampton is a living testament to and author who kept believing in a book, the importance of its subject. great testament to a publisher who kept faith with an offer when in these days a lot of publishers would not have. and makes it a special cause for celebration tonight. with all due felling, i will turn this over to dina hampton.

[applause] >> thank you, thank you so much. i am so excited to be here tonight to talk to you about the lives of three extraordinary people in this book, tom hurwitz, elliot abrams and angela davis and the extraordinary school they found themselves in against the odds considering their differing backgrounds. in the early 1960s. the founder of the school as many of you know, because many of you have connections with the school was elizabeth hurley and who was born to a well-to-do family. after attending smith college she moved to greenwich village and found herself among a group of artists and radicals and

social reformers of every stripe at the first blooming of greenwich village's bohemian flowering. she started as a freelance reporter and then studied as a psychologist and social worker and inspired by john do we, she and a partner, louis marx, ran a series of model classes and schools in the public education system, based on the progressive series of john dewey. she and her compatriots railed against the role of rote memorization, and strict memorization. she believed children should read and write and do things on their own timetable and it was harmful to force them to do it faster. she believed their emotional development was as important as their intellectual development. he said the most important thing the school could do was get

children into the habit of being happy. most importantly she believed, and her fellow progressive educators believed that a school must instill in children's minds the ability to think independently so that they could participate fully in the american democracy. in 1932 elizabeth ehrlan's classes were c.s. 41, still in the village. the city at that point was due its funding from the experiment and the parents were so upset that their children would not be able to take classes with elizabeth ehrlan that they banded together in something famous in a school or at a parent's ice-cream parlor. they got to get the money or started to get together the money to start their own

schools. in september of 1932 little red schoolhouse opened and ten years later in 1942 shortly before elizabeth ehrlan's untimely death elisabeth irwin high school opened on charles and st. a few blocks south of little red 11. a few years later, in the 1950s, the parent body of the elizabeth apps made a roll-call of cultural and artistic society of the day, playwright arthur miller was a parent, we guthrie was a parent their, walter bernstein who wrote the screenplay of the magnificent 7 and failsafe and other well-known screen place was a parent as was polanski who wrote

many film noirs and also a parent was able miracle who with his wife had adopted the children of julius and ethel rosenberg who were executed in 1953 for espionage. also under the name louis allen wrote the song strange fruit that billie holliday made famous, remarkably talented. the parents of tom hurwitz, his parents were among that group. leo was a documentarian and his mother was a documentarian -- was in the dance troupe. see if i can see.

as a young man, tom looked at his parents''s wild ride through the profession within the. with his liquid brown eyes and full lips and wiry brown hair brushed into submission and parted on the side, he was a dreamy and stubborn youngster who like his father couldn't bear to concede a point. in some ways he was a typical child. he had a leather jacket with fringe and daniel boone had with the tail around the back. and the biggest collection of pull a gun is of every source. when i spoke to my analyst about it he said he won't would have more of the money grows up. the death of the rosenbergss pervaded his childhood. he talked about with his father. could they get you and mom?

no, we are artists. leo's response is not particularly on point but, was comforted by this response. but tom's parents did not keep him from participating in political causes. he and his classmates spent many saturdays protesting the segregated lunch policies in the southern states. ticketing woolworth's was an unofficial requirement to the i. class of '62. elliott abrams, another protagonist in the book was in the class of '65 with tom. he was a middle-class, his mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an immigration lawyer and middle-of-the-road democrats, new dealers and his mother and rolled elliot in the

school in ninth grade having heard of the school's reputation. most american high schools in the 1960s the abram family politics put elliott to the left of his classmates. and elizabeth apps he was the equivalent of a republican. culturally he was also out of step. like most of his classmates he was jewish but unlike most of his classmates from secular families or the product of mixed marriage elliott's families kept a kosher home. as of the months went by eliot began to react to what he perceived a knee-jerk left-wing orthodoxy of the school. the magazine racks and a library, he saw progress of publication this like the nation. why he asked the library include the school not achieve some balance in the publication it

displayed? why not stop the "national review"? the culture is dominated by right-wing politics, she replied. we don't need more of it in our school. in elliot's view history teacher harold kirschner personify the stilted politics. he was a rigorous and dedicated teacher but his analyses of historical movements seemed absurd to him. why did the country acquire colonies? because countries needed economic markets. who in these impoverished colonies were in a position to buy anything he wanted incredulously. in 1964 the word around school was kerschner voted for lyndon johnson, and had he ever cast a mainstream vote for fear that a victory of a conservative republican barry goldwater

became fashioned into america. in elliot's opinion that fear was overblown. increasingly appalled by the school's ideological slant elliott began to vocalized his own political views. he debated his classmates in the basement cafeteria. is chief opponent was tom hurwitz. is equal in intellectual precocity and love of a good fight, the impromptu discussions often ended in shouting matches between the two. a hot topic was cuba and fidel castro who had come to power in 1959. most students are him as a romantic revolutionary bringing economic and social justice to his people. elliott saw him as another standard issue communist dictator. angela davis was in the class of 1961. that class included robert

deniro for untimely. they lived in the village and kathy levine who later became involved in the 1981 -- took part in the brinks robbery in which a guard and two police men were killed and served many years in prison for that. angela davis lived in birmingham, alabama at the height of jim crow and escape from the wretched segregated school system, she entered e. i. in edging a scholarship from the service committee. i will read a short passage about her. when she entered the school although angela braced herself for outright hostility she had not foreseen her hosts's tendency to be over solicitous of their few black acquaintances. she wrote that in her autobiography. angela did not question the desire to eliminate racism and

she knew bringing her to the school was an earnest action for that end bought from day to day she questioned the motives behind any overtures extended to her, invitations to visit her classmates home prompted by genuine friendship or feelings of obligation, guilt or attempts to display their liberal largess. there were times she would arrive at classmate apartments to discover a black retainer in the family's employ. she would invariably be called house speaker but to angelo that was merely semantics. the housekeeper she thought was observant and that made her uncomfortable. between the communities bafflement how to deal with this newcomer and angela's shyness and her stance for her hosts, limited opportunities for meaningful connections and she felt a constant sense of unease. she was not alone. such feelings of not belonging, never knowing where one stood shared to varying extent by the handful of her fellow

african-americans schoolmates. in the book i followed these three people through their unbelievably event hacked and dramatic climax. he played a part in the occupation of the school in the spring of 1968. he then moved to california where he was an activist and organizer among others things in the g i movement which was an underreported phenomenon in the annals of vietnam protests where people supported and organized soldiers growing dissent for the war. it centered around the i coffeehouses which were places where the soldiers could meet and share their concerns and growing protest. those coffeehouses were first founded by fed gardner, class of 1959. he returned to new york city in

the 1970s and became a successful cinematographer, still is. and often filmed with social content. one of the first films he worked on was harlem county, u.s.a.. elliott when'd to harvard and after four years of elizabeth irwin, more like-minded than the associates which he did and they would go on to become the core of the neo conservatives which in the 80s release 4 of fight against a lot of the advancements counterculture of the 60s had made an in the student occupation of harvard in the spring of 1969 and a year after columbia, they formed the committee to keep harvard open

and to this day elliot talk about at as the high point of his university career. it is important to know he stayed a democrat until he worked for reagan's election and got into the administration and rose quickly, then he became a republican and in the administration he became embroiled in the iran-contra scandal. angela attended brandeis, an east coast school that didn't help her feelings of alienation and she joined the communist party usa and first rose to national prominence when she went head to head with governor ronald reagan in california when the board of regents fired her from her first position as professor for her membership in the communist party. she was soon after, the

concentration of events in these people's live in the 70s was remarkable, charged with murder and kidnapping and conspiracy in connection with an attempted jailbreak in the marine county court house in northern california. you went underground to me they capture, she was captured and spent 18 months in prison before her trial which was covered the world over. i will read you one more piece from that. this was when she gets captured. re-entering the motel in the late afternoon and gillette noted dark suited men milling about the lobby. she kept down the now familiar feeling of panic that spread through her. she was probably imagining things she told herself. the stress of life as a fugitive had taken its toll. every white man in a suit seems

to her like an fbi agent ready to pounce. resolutely she made her way across the lobby to the elevator. acting on the second floor she spied a man peering out of one of the doors and hallway. another man who had entered the elevator with her followed her out. agents burst out of every room on the floor and converged on her shouting are you angela davis? one of them pull a gun. moments before when angela realized her capture was imminent and unexpected sense of calm possessed her. there was a sickening moment of terror as she pictured herself small one and beating on the carpet. they brought her to the headquarters on east 69th street where she was kept for several hours before being driven downtown to the women's house of detention and sixth avenue and greenwich avenue. a massive tent story brick building at the jefferson library stand there now that loomed over the town houses and

tenements of greenwich village. disoriented as she was angela still recognized it. she had walked by it palestine's under way to the elizabeth apps as a teenager and visibly recalled the female inmates as they rained down curses in many window jails. in a grimy waiting rome, and she saw her image and the words wanted by the fbi. if that were not so really enough, directly next was a poster by a former classmate. i graduated from the bis in the 1970s. i wish my history teacher was here. i didn't have -- former

classmates. i really had no sense of the history of the school at that point and it was only ten years later as alumni director that i began to appreciate the history of the school. my fascination with 1960s graduates began when i organized -- in 1961. and the first thing they did was in grand central station. and i realized -- a unique group of people. that is about all, i think you so much for coming. i think the corner bookstore for being a wonderful host. and to introduce me.

and my editor, kathy and lisa is here. if you have any questions. and asked to please wait until the gentleman with the microphone comes to you. [applause] >> any questions? >> when you spoke with all these people many years after they left the school, what are their feelings? did they see the school as being formative in their lives? do you think they would have become who they were regardless of where they went to school? >> many of the students who went there came from families who

were very progressive, left oriented and there is a predilection to that. i know that many of them told me this pull shaped their lives sc and fate fact that back. and people who graduatede scho and fate fact that back. and people who graduated like elliot reacted against this -- and wrote about the rosenbergs and their parents culpability. they reacted very much against it. in many cases they were very

bitter about it. >> that is confusing, such an amazingly democratic society when people are allowed to express themselves freely and to have a background in that way, that elliot abrams could be in that way. it is incredible to me. can you in this way? >> one of the things elliott found, one of the things he found in school is the loved being in the opposition. he loves being a countersponge. he believes ve . he believes very strongly in what he believes the nest of his character and police came into focus and reinforced when he went to harvard and found

himself under siege. it is important to notes, punish or penalized, he was made the editor of info, editor of schools and magazines. and they moved away -- moved the other way around. [inaudible] >> do they talk about rand smith at all. >> rice smith was director of the school.

and elizabeth irwin -- >> a couple years after. and he was asked if he had communist teachers and said it was none of their business. >> that is right. more than being an old left sort of new york seller. not terribly bad girl. they don't talk about him a lot. angeles spoke of him very fondly and when they first came to the school she came a week before the school opened to get oriented with the people who she was staying with and remembers him smiling at her and being

very courtly which reminded her of the south because she went around to the teachers and calling them by their first name and wearing jeans. maybe i made a horrible mistake. maybe this will be full of crazy be next. change did they maintain a continuing involvement with the school? >> most of them would be reunions. almost every year now. i think it has done that pretty

regularly. did she really? and tom also comes to vote reunions now and then. he kept sporadic touch with the school. and elliott kept touch with the school until the 1918s and just felt people and classmates turned their back on them. so yes, she hasn't been back in a long time. in the mid 90s, a 50th anniversary commemorative book. everybody submitted their memories. and i remember the arts were

fabulous. and they departed and i hated everything about the politics and hope that is gone now and as for everything else it caused a tremendous uproar when it was published and people were beside themselves and highly angry terms and elliot has always been able to drive his classmates crazy and by extension the entire sort of left wing community crazy and a role that he relished. >> in all of these years of research what was the most surprising thing you found about one of the three characters are what details did you uncover that took you by surprise? >>